Paul Janisch

THAMI MAZWAI: BEE advisers wrong to curb white family firms

My disquiet on the committee’s suggestions regarding QSEs is that it would crowd out entrepreneurship — it virtually says whites or white families cannot start or own a small business without having a black shareholder or partner. This is akin to the past, when blacks were not allowed to start businesses.

via www.businessday.co.za

Well put Mr Mazwai. Again I ask the question, why is Sandile Zungu still on the BEE Committee. Is he in fact an entrepreneur or a businessman, or is he just another of those people who redistributes wealth and not create it?
Take him off - he is an embarrassment.

How you get to degrees of black?

This is taken from a recent article in the Business Day.

 THE Department of Communications has reiterated its plans to involve black companies in the manufacturing of digital TV decoders through possible subsidies or incentives to companies that lack funds and resources.

A department official said it had formed an interministerial process with the departments of trade and industry, science and technology and the Treasury to seek ways to help small black manufacturing companies become involved in the manufacturing process, possibly by incentives or through financial aid.

"We want a manufacturing base that reflects the demographic base of the country. " said the official.

via www.businessday.co.za

This is how you get to degrees of black.  Sort of Orwellian - most South Africans are black, some more than others.  I had sensationalised this in a previous post. 

I think this is the way BEE is going to go - a move from the liberal definition into something more conducive to eliciting votes from the majority of the population. 

TESEF delays reminiscent of good ol' SA

The execution of Black Empowerment Act, or Transformation of Economic and Social Empowerment Framework (TESEF), as the legislation is formally called, is yet to take place since Cabinet asked Prime Minister Nahas Angula to spearhead wide consultations and ensure that the legislation embodies all existing laws. Nevertheless, the ruling party’s politburo also slowed down the implementation by asking additional time to make input.

Namibia Chamber of Commerce and Industry be moans the slothful pace of implementation, saying as of now so much is said regarding TESEF but TESEF is merely legislation on paper.
“Government is too slow to come up with a [BEE] framework,” says NCCI. The chamber emphasises that it is not propagating legislation to enrich a few of the elite of the country and politically-connected by broad-based economic empowerment but for legislation to benefit “every Namibian direct or indirectly.

via www.newera.com.na

Don't worry Namibia - it was pretty much the same with us. When they eventually did publish the codes they were so full of mathematical and grammatical errors that it took us two years to decipher them.

Anybody want to know what happened to ASGISA?

ALEC HOGG: It's Monday January 10 2011 and in this special podcast we speak with Iraj Abedian, the chief executive of Pan African Advisory Services. Iraj, before we go into President Zuma's address at Polokwane on Saturday, which really had a lot of economic ‘meat', you're an economic advisor to, what is known as the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa, or AsgiSA. Is that still going?

IRAJ ABEDIAN:  Well not really, formally it's been subsumed, many elements of it, to the new Growth Path. Some other elements of it to aspects of DTI and it's been pretty much superceded by the new administration's approach to economic policy.

ALEC HOGG: So, the New Growth Path would probably be the way forward then?

IRAJ ABEDIAN:  Absolutely that's the new framework.

via www.moneyweb.co.za

It's gone, replaced by Ebie's New Growth Path. I wonder how long it will take Eskom to drop this acronym from their standard procurement nomenclature.

Rob's new year surprise

Happy Noo Yeah!   It's always great to start a new year - there is a mountain of resolutions to ignore and weight to gain etc.

Rob Davies, rather sweetly, left us with a little new year reading.  It seems that the DTI has realised that the codes limited accreditation to only SANAS.  Their solution is to repeal paragraph 10 of code 000 and replace it with notice 110.  Not a bad idea - although paragraph 10.1 was the one that spoke of verification being "encouraged".  I can't say that this really matters because it has got to the point now where only accredited verification agency certificates will be accepted.

Rob has now allowed the Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors (IRBA) to become an accreditation body.  I assume that the repealing of paragraph 10 will allow other types of bodies to become accreditation bodies too.

Nicolaas van Wyk, posting on his blog, made a very pertinent observation

Inexplicably the proposed amendments exclude members from other professional bodies such as SAICA, ACCA, SAIPA and SAIBA from being recognized. Members of these professional bodies will have to undergo the arduous process of obtaining SANAS accreditation before they will be allowed to perform B-BBEE verification of measured entities.

I know nothing about the IRBA, and at the time of posting their website was down.  Is this now a political thing or is it that only the IRBA requested to become an accreditation body? 

A few other points that I noticed

• The body itself must remain a superior contributor to BEE (level three and higher) - as must VAs
• The DTI has pledged total faith in that dodgy verification manual
• The code applies to regulatory bodies like ABVA.  Please don't tell me we are now going to get another ABvacuous.

You have about 50 days left to bitch about it.